hmm what is widely considered the best class? soldier? i have 2 files with soldier classes

I don't know, after I had charge fully upgraded I didn't have problems with anything.  I just charged up in its face and then spammed shotgun.  When everything around me was dead, I charged at the complete other side of the battle field and repeated.

Even before I had it fully charged it was pretty easy.  I had to be more careful but the fact I could charge through obstacles and all over the battlefield, that charge attack was pretty broken.  I was only playing on whatever the normal difficulty was, but it was easier than the easiest setting on Mass Effect 1.  It's not like I'm good at game either, I generally suck.  :-p

(when I finally finished Mass Effect 1 I played it on easy just because I wanted to get the story and the character so didn't care about difficulty)

Vanguard female. I played Soldier Female through the first time, but wanted a taste of biotic goodness this time around and wasn't disappointed.

EDIT: Clarification. Soldier Female was my ME 1 playthrough. Vanguard female was my ME2 playthrough.

Lot of guys playing female.

I put forth that this is because Jeniffer Hale does a better job than whoever they hired to do the male Shepard.

....

...Also the romantic options for women are a lot more interesting.

If you try that on anything harder than normal you're going to be raped like a naked schoolgirl in Gary Indiana.

Infiltrator owns everything else. Sentinel is pretty good too. When you add warp ammo and pick up the Assault Rifle later in the game the tech armor you are pretty tough to kill and deal out some massive damage. I play a Male Paragon Infiltrator and a Female Renegade Sentinel, cause everyone knows women are evil. I also created the sexiest female character in the game.

I played engineer because I was an engineer in the original and because I'm an engineer IRL.

Soldier, then Adept.  I don't like how Adepts had to wait for their power to cooldown before they could use ANY power: I was looking forward to flinging powers around at whim.  Soldier was fun though.  Tried, but didn't much care for, the other classes.

Yeah, my renagade character for ME and ME2 was female and the voice actor did a *much* better job than the male voice actor (haven't played him in ME2, though played through as paragon male in ME).

Yeah, I don't pretend to know about the harder difficulty since I finished ME on the easiest and ME2 on the normal difficulty, though I do plan to play through ME2 one more time on the hardest.

All I do know is that the game was incredibly easy on normal because charge was just so overpowered.  I only had trouble on a single part in the game and that's because my charge just wasn't leveled up yet at that point (mission where you find Garrus).

Infiltrator. It is too easy when you pop the Infiltrator slow mo and take down at least 2 enemies with headshots.

I went infiltrator first and soldier second. Both of my games were imports from ME1 with my female Shep being a total renegade on top of being a snipey little "you finish the sentence." My male Shep is the stereotypical, square ass good guy soldier.